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ATYCLB is U2's most iconic album, literally.
I see U2 have changed their profile pic to the heart-in-suitcase. So here's my love letter to it, my favorite U2 design, the most sublime of U2 designs.
U2's design team wanted the album graphics to mirror the band's return to earnestness and simplicity with ATYCLB (after the delicious, indulgent, colorful experimentation—lyrically, sonically, graphically—of AB/Zooropa/Pop), so they turned to fundamental forms of communication.
Longtime U2 designer Shaughn McGrath took it back to the earliest form of written communication—pictographs—designing one for each song, as well as the album as a whole. Before the alphabet, before cuneiform, we had pictographs: pictures that resemble what they signify.
Pictographs are essential to communicating when we don't share a language. We see them most often in the international crossroads of modern life—gatherings (like the Olympics), transportation hubs (like airports), etc.
In 1974, members of AIGA (the professional association for design) designed a set of 34 internationally recognizable pictograms to guide users of public spaces, called Symbol Signs. These were ultimately adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation. https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18673291/
Many have lost their iconic significance (meaning they no longer bear a physical resemblance to the thing signified), but still serve as effective symbols (like the phone). Some not so much (my students have no idea why gloves and an umbrella would mean the lost and found).
Some require overhauls to reflect our progress toward an informed and inclusive society (instead of a man and woman, show me a toilet and a urinal — make design about function and not presumptions about users!).
But I digress. McGrath was directly inspired by two of these Symbol Signs. Well, one sign that had *two* meanings. In the category of Processing Activities, the same suitcase is used to signify both Baggage Check-in and Baggage Claim.
The symbol's duality (for the stuff you intend to take with you and the stuff you make sure to claim upon arrival—the stuff you drop off vs the stuff you pick up) connects so brilliantly with the U2 lyrics: The only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind.
McGrath adapted the suitcase to be more harmonious with the proportions of the Eurostile typeface used for the album text. He added a heart to it (a "manly" heart, according to Larry—which I interpret to mean making the traditionally feminine accessible to the masculine).
So, there's love packed up in the suitcase. And the common, beautiful interpretation is that love is all that you take with you—it's the "all" that you can't leave behind. But, "love is not the easy thing." And I go back to those dual meanings of the suitcase Symbol Signs:
Love goes into:
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you deal
All you count on two fingers
And all that you steal
[insert unintelligible Bongoloese here]
You gotta leave it behind.
All that you fashion
All that you make
All that you build
All that you break
All that you measure
All that you deal
All you count on two fingers
And all that you steal
[insert unintelligible Bongoloese here]
You gotta leave it behind.
And in doing so even love occasionally must get left behind. Sometimes you carry the suitcase on to your next destination, but sometimes it has to get abandoned at baggage claim. And you realize there's nothing you still need in that suitcase. You go buy a toothbrush and walk on.
Anyway. Thus was born the best symbol in U2's visual history. And the second most tattooed symbol on U2 fans (it was the first until the Joshua Tree anniversary tours happened). And now it's U2's profile pic, and we love to see it.
